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An analytical look at FTW

Success will be mine! Image from GW

I thought I might share with you guys how I judge the success of FTW. I've always had a goal for the site and I'm determined to stick to my guns and make it work. It hasn't been an easy road sometimes and this is no overnight success story.

Here are some of the things that I look at to see how well I'm staying on track.

1. My email.
While this isn't part of the information Google provides, it's where I can keep track of how many times things are downloaded. I get an email notification when someone downloads something from FTW.

With the addition of the link bar across the top of the page and making it easier to get to the Downloads section, there has been a huge increase in stuff being downloaded. This means you guys are finding, downloading and using the the stuff here on FTW. I'd consider this a success.

2. The Tuesday Top Ten
I'm constantly amazed at the stuff I miss each week and I know that this simple, weekly feature helps bloggers get noticed for contributing great hobby content to the blogging community.
This has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the members of the FTW Blogger Group. Maybe that's why I like this feature so much.
Big success here.

3. Member's posts worth checking out
This section has gone through lots of changes over time. I really like where it's at now because it's up near the top and includes a picture so you can see what's been added to the site with a quick glance and jump right to it if it catches your interest. Yet another way to promote the great stuff out there. Success.

4. Bounce RateIt essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who "bounce" away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site. -Wiki

Like most people, I installed a little bit of code on my site (Google Analytics) that provides me with lots of information about what visitors do when they arrive. Things like how many people visit each day, what pages they look at, stuff like that.

In theory, you want your Bounce rate real low indicating that people stay on your site and only your site. FTW's rate is near 75% meaning that people come here with the purpose of heading out someplace else when they see something cool... like another FTW member's post in the blogroll.
That was the point from the beginning, to open up the 40k blogging community to everyone. Again, success.

5. Visitor Loyalty
You all are extremely loyal readers. Thank you.
After visting once, the majority of people will continue to visit from then on out. Not counting first time visitors, most people have visited over 200 times.
I can't say thank you enough for continuing to visit.

6. Daily visitors
I suppose there are a bunch of different ways to measure this from unique visits to pageviews to some other obscure way but the point is that FTW is continuing to grow. It's been a steady increase over time which means that FTW is growing into a site with tons of loyal readers that know they can come back for lots of great stuff and links to all kinds of other 40k material. That works for me... success.

All in all, I feel like FTW is headed in the right direction. I think the site has tapped into something more than just the latest 40k news and rumors or updates. It's become more than just showing you the work that I do.
FTW allows me to share my gaming thoughts and ideas, learn techniques and tricks I would have never picked up anywhere else and stay involved with almost 500 other great bloggers each day.

It's made 40k a great hobby for me.
That's a success in my book for sure.

UPDATE: This post is fairly old and FTW has since experienced a number of changes. Sometimes it's nice to look back at where you came from and where you're going.

If you've got any questions about something in this post, shoot me a comment and I'll be glad to answer. Make sure to share your hobby tips and thoughts in the comments below!

I remember when FtW first kicked off and I thought it was such a great idea, and then there was the small break and then you returned. I never thought it would have gone as far as it did, and it's great that it has. You've brought 40k bloggers together from around the globe and helped all to connect. Great job Ron! Looking forward to another year.

As a modeller/painter first, this blog has replaced BoLS as my blog of choice. Great work. .."I think its refreshing wave of positive input that makes us feel good about our hobby while the forums are often very negative."..Couldn't agree more.

Karitas summed it up nicely. Without FTW, we wouldn't know about each other. Here's to another year of FTW hobby goodness.

One suggestion though. Can you make the box-out with the links to ftw blogs into a scroll-y thing again? i say this because at the moment you have to click 'see all' to see beyond the first 5 or so blogs in the list, which i don't know about most people, but i never bother with. If anyone else is like me, it severly cuts traffic onto people's blogs if they aren't one of the 5 most recent posters

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